David Cameron, the consensus builder, finally decided that his friend had to go

“GOVE OUT”. That’s what the placards said when teachers went on strike last week in their latest protest against the education secretary’s agenda for schools.

Scarcely a week later, the protesters have got their way. Michael Gove is out, removed not by angry teachers but by a friend and colleague.

Last year David Cameron called him “a cross between Mr Chips and the Duracell bunny”, part of a paean of praise to the former Education Secretary and his reforms, in a speech to the Conservative Party conference. Tory members gave Mr Gove an ovation.

Today the bunny has a new hutch, and one that looks rather smaller than his last one. He leaves the Department for Education to become Conservative Chief Whip, taking charge of the organisation of Tory MPs in the House of Commons.

The move was a genuine surprise at Westminster, part of the most surprising reshuffle since Gordon Brown brought Peter Mandelson back to the fray in 2009. Mr Gove is remarkably close to Mr Cameron, both politically and personally; their wives are friends, their children attend the same schools and the families often share the school run.

Mr Cameron is adamant that Mr Gove’s move is not a demotion, hailing his colleague as “one of my big hitters, one of my real stars”.

Yes, he will go from being a full secretary of state and a full member of the Cabinet to having the status of a more junior minister with the right to attend Cabinet meetings. But he will also attend the twice-daily management meetings in Downing Street — at 8.30am and 4pm — where the Prime Minister and his team set priorities and decide the response to the day’s events.

While whips traditionally embrace the media the way vampires go sunbathing, Mr Gove will tour the studios speaking for Government and party in interviews between now and election day.

Such PR work may look insubstantial when compared with running a major Whitehall department and influencing the lives of millions of children. But the importance of communications to this Government is enormous, and growing.

There are barely eight months until Parliament dissolves for the general election, so there is precious little governing left to be done. What remains is campaigning, talking to voters.

And Mr Gove talks more fluently, elegantly and courteously than just about any other Conservative today. But those Downing Street declarations still sound a little off-key. Political careers are like sharks: they must keep moving or they drown. And Mr Gove is moving but he is not moving forwards.

Colleagues ominously suggest that the fact Downing Street even needs to talk about the importance and stature of his new job speaks volumes.

So what happened? What explains the rise and fall of Mr Gove, hitherto regarded as one of the great successes of the Coalition government?

For the first couple of years in office, Mr Gove approached the job of reform with some guile. His reforms, freeing schools from local authority control, were sold as merely the continuation of Tony Blair’s work, putting parents and children first. Teachers were dedicated professionals who should be freed from their bureaucratic shackles and empowered. Who could argue with that?

But Mr Gove did indeed meet resistance, from teachers and their unions, and his own civil servants. Where other politicians respond to resistance by seeking compromise, Mr Gove responds with warfare, total and outright political warfare. He fought “the Blob”, the educational establishment, with noisy fervour. That enthusiasm made him a hate figure not just for teachers but for vested interests across the public sector.

It also made him famous: polls show he is as well-recognised by voters as more senior colleagues such as George Osborne and Theresa May.

While Mr Gove’s zeal for the fight attracted admiration among colleagues, some in No 10 always harboured doubts about the total war approach to politics.

By instinct, Mr Cameron builds a consensus, he is not an ideologue. He was irked by Mr Gove straying beyond his brief to pick fights, with the Liberal Democrats, with William Hague over war in Libya, even with Sir Brian Leveson over press regulation.

Those doubts were reciprocated: by last year, relations between Mr Gove’s staff and Mr Cameron’s team had broken down almost totally. Things might have been expected to improve with the departure last year of Dominic Cummings, Mr Gove’s chief policy adviser and long-standing critic of the Downing Street operation. In truth, his departure arguably deprived Mr Gove of a restraining influence. Since Mr Cummings’s resignation, Mr Gove’s restless intellect has propelled him into ever more fights, some of them unnecessary and self-defeating.

By ditching Sally Morgan, a former Blair aide, as chairman of Ofsted, the schools inspection body, he gave up his claim to Blairite support. By clashing with Sir Michael Wilshaw, his own choice as chief inspector, he raised doubts about his own standards regime.

By attacking Mrs May, anonymously in the press, over Islamic extremism, he fractured Cabinet unity.

By denouncing Boris Johnson as a potential Tory leader, he pleased Mr Osborne — who is whispered to have tried to stave off this demotion — but made the Mayor of London an enemy.

And by lamenting the “ridiculous” preponderance of Old Etonians in British public life, he gave Labour a stick with which to beat the Prime Minister.

Those missteps helped make Mr Gove vulnerable. So too, curiously, did his victories: because his school reforms are seen in No 10 as being a success, there was less risk that ousting him would be seen as an admission of failure on education. Instead, the spinners can tell a story of minister whose work is largely done safely moving on.

Yet if this is the background to Mr Gove’s move, it is not the cause. For that, look back to those protesters and their placards. Tory internal polls show Mr Gove had become toxic, especially to female voters.

Women are over-represented in the teaching profession and across the public sector. Yet they are under-represented among those planning to vote Conservative next year.

Hence Coalition policies such as £2,000 of free child care. Hence the energetic promotion of female ministers elsewhere in government. And hence Mr Gove’s removal from a job he loved.

Here, it is well worth considering the story of the Department of Health under Mr Cameron. Andrew Lansley dedicated years of passion to redesigning the NHS, with Mr Cameron's blessing. But he lost his job as health secretary for implementing that redesign and igniting controversy among NHS staff.

The symmetry goes further. Mr Lansley has personal ties to Mr Cameron, having hired him at Conservative Central Office in the late 1980s. After turning a sensible policy into a major political problem, he was moved to a more junior post as Leader of the House of Commons, another not-quite Cabinet rank job.

That looks a lot like a precedent for Mr Gove’s move.

Consider too, what followed Mr Lansley at health. He was replaced by the affable and emollient Jeremy Hunt, who has changed the politics of health without changing the policy.

Mr Lansley’s reforms have been implemented but with the genial Mr Hunt at the helm, much venom has drained from the debate.

Yes, Labour and Ed Miliband will try to make health a central election issue during the next winter but Mr Cameron is confident in Mr Hunt’s ability to keep the issue largely off the agenda.

Nicky Morgan, Mr Gove’s replacement, is as pleasant and uncontroversial as Mr Hunt – and a woman, too.

And what does the future hold for Mr Gove? Mr Cameron is understood to have assured him of a return to full Cabinet rank if the Conservatives are back in office next year.

Mr Gove will doubtless be confident that this promise will be honoured.

But then, Mr Lansley was also sure that Mr Cameron would eventually restore him to political glory. He confidently expected to be sent to the European Commission this week. Instead, Mr Cameron sacked him.